Demeter
Demeter's JournalVets For Bernie: Why the Most Anti-War Candidate Has Many Military Supporters
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-veterans-are-supporting-bernie-sanders?akid=13598.227380.R9JZDn&rd=1&src=newsletter1044574&t=3Sanders' career in Congress has been living testimony to the fact that opposing wars but supporting our soldiers are not mutually exclusive goals.
When then-freshman Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders first arrived in Washington, D.C., he didn't first tend to the great social democratic causes that he spent his life working on: a national living wage, health care for all, or expanding labor unions.
Rather, the very first bill he introduced was H.R. 695 – the Guard and Reserve Family Protection Act of 1991. The purpose of the bill was to make sure that reserve and National Guard soldiers who were deployed to serve in the Gulf War were entitled to any pay they may have missed as a result of going to war, to ensure that their deployment wages were equal to their civilian wages.
Sanders' career in Congress has been living testimony to the fact that opposing wars but supporting our soldiers are not mutually exclusive goals. He has been a consistent advocate for both active duty military and veterans, and there are now signs that those veterans are returning the favor, organizing for his campaign...
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Tell me, future boy, who's President of the United States in 2017? Weekend Economists 10/23-25/15
Dr. Emmett Brown: Then tell me, future boy, who's President of the United States in 1985?
Marty McFly: Ronald Reagan.
Dr. Emmett Brown: Ronald Reagan? The actor? Then who's vice president? Jerry Lewis? I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady!
Marty McFly: Whoa. Wait, Doc!
Dr. Emmett Brown: And Jack Benny is secretary of the treasury.
Marty McFly: Doc, you gotta listen to me.
Dr. Emmett Brown: I've had enough practical jokes for one evening. Good night, future boy!
Marty McFly: No, wait, Doc. Doc. The-the-the bruise on your head, I know how that happened. You told me the whole story. You were standing on your toilet and you were hanging a clock, and you fell and you hit your head on the sink. And that's when you came up with the idea for the flux capacitor.
Marty McFly: which is what makes time travel possible.
If there is anything iconic in films from the 80's, it's a toss-up between Star Wars (still in production) and Back to the Future. I have a personal fondness for BTTF because the story goes back to my birth year in the first episode. And the second goes forward to October 21, 2015, this year and month! Has it been that long, already? If this is the future, why are we so unhappy?
Well, the following weekend thread will delve into that question and others, while reveling in the creative genius of:
Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, and Frank Marshall served as executive producers. In the film, teenager Marty McFly (Fox) is sent back in time to 1955, where he meets his future parents in high school and accidentally becomes his mother's romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by causing his parents-to-be to fall in love, and with the help of eccentric scientist Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (Lloyd), he must find a way to return to 1985.
Zemeckis and Gale wrote the script after Gale mused upon whether he would have befriended his father if they had attended school together. Various film studios rejected the script until the financial success of Zemeckis' Romancing the Stone. Zemeckis approached Spielberg, who agreed to produce the project at Amblin Entertainment, with Universal Pictures as distributor. The first choice for the role of Marty McFly was Michael J. Fox. However, he was busy filming his television series "Family Ties" and the show's producers would not allow him to star in the film. Consequently, Eric Stoltz was cast in the role. During filming, Stoltz and the filmmakers decided that the role was miscast, and Fox was again approached for the part. Now with more flexibility in his schedule and the blessing of his show's producers, Fox managed to work out a timetable in which he could give enough time and commitment to both.
Back to the Future was released on July 3, 1985, grossing over $300 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1985. It won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film, and the Academy Award for Best Sound Effects Editing, as well as receiving three additional Academy Award nominations, five BAFTA nominations, and four Golden Globe nominations, including Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy). Ronald Reagan even quoted the film in his 1986 State of the Union Address.
In 2007, the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry, and in June 2008 the American Film Institute's special AFI's 10 Top 10 designated the film as the 10th-best film in the science fiction genre. The film marked the beginning of a franchise, with two sequels, Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990), as well as an animated series, theme park ride, several video games and a forthcoming musical.
I hadn't heard about a musical....must investigate!
Paul Ryan could either be very good, or very bad for America
It looks like he can exert control over the GOP legislators. He's making a strong start.
Now, if he works that control for the good of the nation, we all benefit.
If he uses that control to jerk us around to the tune of the whacko social agenda and worse economic falsehoods, then we are in deeper trouble than we were with Boehner. In compensation, such efforts would strengthen Bernie, I think. He knows how to deal with groups.
Bernie is the cat herder! 
The GOP’s Really Going to Do It: Trump Isn’t a Phase — Republicans Think He’s Their Best Shot
A poll bolsters Trump's campaign by showing that not only do GOP voters like him, they think he can beat Clinton.http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/gops-really-going-do-it-trump-isnt-phase-republicans-think-hes-their-best-shot?akid=13595.227380.BWWWLh&rd=1&src=newsletter1044494&t=9
For months now, the assumption in the mainstream press has been that the Donald Trump candidacy is just a phase for Republican primary voters, and that after they spent the pre-primary season expressing themselves, they would settle down and vote for someone who actually stands a chance running against Hillary Clinton, such as a Jeb Bush or a Marco Rubio. Since July, there have been dozens of prominent pundits declaring that Trump-mania was about to wind down so the real race can begin, and, hilariously, those predictions continue to fail and Trump continues to dominate the polls.
To be entirely fair, there is good reason to believe that Trump is going to flame out and a party standard-bearer will step in. After all, that’s what happened in the 2012 primary season, as voters expressed their id by backing candidates like Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich before settling down and running the only guy who had half a chance against Obama, Mitt Romney. History shows that as much as Republican primary voters like to imagine they’re pissing off the liberals, they also blanch and remember that they would like even more to have a reasonable shot at the White House. Under the circumstances, the Trump flameout isn’t an unreasonable prediction.
But now there’s new ABC News/Washington Post polling data that complicates the picture tremendously. The data shows not just that Republican voters like Trump, but that they believe he has a better chance of winning the general election than Clinton. It’s not even a close race....
WHICH IS WHY BERNIE SANDERS, WHO CONSISTENTLY POLLS AS DEFEATING TRUMP, SHOULD BE OUR NOMINEE. BERNIE IS ACCEPTABLE TO THE LIBERALS, PROGRESSIVES, SOCIALISTS, TEA PARTY, THE 99% IN GENERAL...A MAN FOR THE TIMES, A MAN FOR THE PEOPLE.
ON EDIT: ADDING THIS:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/how-brewing-revolt-working-americans-driving-sanders-rise-and-fueling-trumps-dangerous?akid=13595.227380.BWWWLh&rd=1&src=newsletter1044494&t=3
Sanders' backers want a government that works. Trump's backers want a government that gets even...Lost in the tumult of covering the 2016 presidential campaign trail is a striking reality that’s largely gone unacknowledged: the brewing revolt at the grassroots by working- and middle-class Americans who feel left behind by the system.
This discontent and its insecurities are fueling the surges of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, who offer different responses to it, and whose candidacies haven’t faded despite predictions from party insiders and many pundits. It’s also underscored by the fact that the GOP’s two leading candidates—Trump and Ben Carson—have never held elective office, unlike the senators and governors trailing them.
Sanders and Trump, in very different ways, are highlighting the failure of status-quo politics to address concerns that hit home with non-wealthy Americans. But while Sanders is running a campaign based on a positive vision of government doing more for these Americans, Trump is striking a cord with people who feel other slices of society need to be put down so they can rise up...
Brazil's Ex-Guerrilla-in-Chief Isn't Going Down Without a Fight
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-21/brazil-s-ex-guerrilla-in-chief-isn-t-going-down-without-a-fightFor much of the past year, as Brazil plunged into economic and political crisis, President Dilma Rousseff seemed cornered in her bunker. Bookish and awkward, she rarely left the presidential palace, pouring over infrastructure reports, focusing on the technical side of painful austerity measures.
But in recent months, as opposition efforts to impeach her gained momentum, something in her visibly shifted. Rousseff, a former urban guerrilla who refused to break under prolonged torture, snapped out of her state of paralysis. With the crisis now focused on her, she seems to be sending a message: I will not make it easy and step aside...
The tenacity that led Rousseff, 67, to fight against military dictatorship as a young woman now makes her cling to power with remarkable serenity. This is despite the longest projected economic crisis since the Great Depression, the lowest approval ratings on record of any president and accusations she illegally financed her election campaign and used accounting tricks to whitewash budget figures.
“She doesn’t think she did anything wrong and resigning would be for her an admission of guilt," said Joao Augusto de Castro Neves, Latin America director of political-risk consulting firm Eurasia Group. "She will go to the end.”
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Attacks on Sanders, Progressives Falsely Depict Obama As Lefty Failure as Opposed to Neoliberal Succ
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/attacks-on-sanders-progressives-falsely-depict-obama-as-lefty-failure-as-opposed-to-neoliberal-success.htmlA sign that the progressive cause is moving out of the wilderness and starting to rattle The Powers That Be is that the messaging apparatus is starting to attempt to demonize Sanders as a hopeless cause. That means he’s moved from the “first they ignore you” phase in Gandhi’s classic trajectory of activism to somewhere between the “then they ridicule you, then they fight you” phases.
We’ll use a particularly noxious article from Slate, flagged by reader Jeff W, called, No, He Can’t – Bernie Sanders is an inspirational candidate, but his theory of change doesn’t have a chance . Jeff W thought it warranted an NC version of “Where’s Waldo?” as in “How many errors can readers spot in this article?”
Mind you, what is important about pieces like this is not that they go after Sanders per se. The headline conveys the much bigger message: Change based on popular will won’t happen, so all of you voters should just stop trying.
Now this is a ratcheting up of anti-democratic messaging when we are seeing major cracks in the institutional ice in the US and other countries that had moved strongly in the neoliberal direction. Jeremy Corbyn’s trouncing of the Blairites has had the elites in the UK frothing at the mouth. The magnitude of Justin Trudeau’s win in Canada caught pundits by surprise. And in the US, Bernie Sanders was written off by the chattering classes from the very start of his campaign. Yet with virtually no media buys, the Democratic party turning away Sanders backers at the local level, until recently, a press blackout on his campaign, Sanders polls at somewhere between 25% ad 35% of Democratic voters, and nearly met Clintons’ fundraising level last quarter at far lower cost, meaning he almost certainly raised more money on a net basis...
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Justice Scalia Says He'll Retire Once He 'Can't Do The Job As Well'
Marshall authored the most important American judicial opinion of all time: Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the supremacy of the Court in legal judgments. He also issued a series of decisions involving the balance of power between the federal government and the states that laid the legal foundation for the young republic. “A hush falls upon us even now as we listen to his words,” Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote more than two centuries later....
OR ARE WE TALKING Chief Justice Roger Taney?
Any list of terrible Supreme Court justices that does not begin with Chief Justice Roger Taney will inherently be controversial. Taney authored what is widely viewed as the worst single decision in the Supreme Court’s history, the pro-slavery decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Though Taney was far more moderate on the issue of slavery as a young man — he once referred to slavery as a “blot on our national character” and he emancipated his own slaves — his views hardened in his old age. In 1857, the same year as Dred Scott, Taney labeled the abolitionist movement “northern aggression.”
BECAUSE I THINK SCALIA HAS GOT TANEY BEAT, BETWEEN THE FLORIDA NON-ELECTION AND THE UNITED CITIZENS DECISIONS...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/justice-scalia-retirement_5627ba31e4b08589ef4a1366?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
The Real Revolution: Bernie Sanders Owes His Success to Occupy Wall Street
On September 17, 2011, a group of activists descended on a New York City park to declare war on corruption in the US political system. Today, 2016 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is closing the gap with rival Hillary Clinton, once thought a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination, and he largely has Occupy Wall Street to thank for it.
They came from all races, creeds, religions, ethnicities, classes and political backgrounds with a unified message: that the unfair distribution of wealth, along with the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision that saw corporations as people who can donate unlimited riches of campaign cash, together as the most corrupting force jeopardizing America’s political system and the security of US citizens.
Over the FOLLOWing days and weeks, heeding the calls of decentralized Anonymous activists organizing online, they came to Zuccotti Park in New York City's Financial District and pitched tents. They helped 2000 other Occupy encampments to organize in the town squares of other cities in other states, which then spread to countries on all seven continents, often as movements continuing the social upheaval that the Arab Spring and Indignados protests brought across Europe. They had a common unifying message, bringing together income inequality and capitalist exploitation, environmental degradation and the human toll of America’s worldwide military adventurism. The people, it turned out, were sick and tired of bailouts to banks backing the military-industrial-prison complex rather than ordinary people. The movement, and the year itself, was radically transformative for the world round.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president has become the end result of those thousands of man-years of activism from Occupy Wall Street. Sanders listened to what started as a genuine grassroots movement of citizens’ demands to transform their country, and the radical idea that a politician should listen to the people’s call for change seems to be paying off for him, as he now leads Clinton in several key polls. His success, along with Donald Trump’s for the GOP, is driving a schism deep into the foundation of the old guards of US political parties.
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/news/20150918/1027166956.html#ixzz3pFQpSpQs
POSTED FOR DISCUSSION
Cyberspying bill CISA is up for a vote
Source: ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION
Dear Friend of Digital Freedom,
Privacy advocates, security experts, major tech companies, and even the Department of Homeland Security all agree—the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015(CISA) is a dangerously wrong approach to cybersecurity that must not become law. But time is running out. The Senate took up the bill yesterday and is planning to bring it for an initial vote as early as tomorrow. We need your help to stop it.
CISA is fundamentally flawed because it creates aggressive spying powers for the government and broad immunity clauses for companies. Vague definitions of key terms would leave the new powers the bill grants open to abuse. It’s only your emails, faxes, and phone calls that have stopped this bill from moving forward. But even against cross-partisan, nationwide opposition, supporters of CISA like Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Burr are trying to ram this bill through.
With your help, we can stop them. Can you make a call today? CLICK ON LINK: https://act.eff.org/action/tell-the-senate-vote-no-on-the-cybersecurity-information-sharing-act
Public pressure has helped convince companies like Salesforce, reddit, Yelp, Twitter and Apple to oppose the bill. Like us, these companies recognize that CISA wouldn’t have prevented major cyber attacks that endanger the privacy of ordinary people, like the Target or U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) breaches—but it would endanger the privacy and civil liberties of Internet users everywhere. The vote on CISA could happen as early as tomorrow morning. With your help, we’ll make sure Congress gets the message: now more than ever, we don’t need more cyber surveillance. We need better security. CISA must be defeated.
Please pick up the phone and make a call today. With your help, we’ll kill this bill.
Nadia Kayyali
EFF Activism Team
Support our work
Read more: https://supporters.eff.org/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=1224
The Problem is: Hillary is part of the Obama Administration
But the solution is: Hillary is part of the Obama Administration.
It's no secret that Obama's disapproval ratings have been high from the start:
Here are approval ratings...just subtract from 100 to get disapproval:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidential-job-approval.aspx
For comparison's sake:
Other years at link.
Similar results from Rassmussen: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/obama_approval_index_history
And then, there is the prickly and petulant way Obama supplies his support/prestige to Hillary, when he wants to, and I'm sure she pays a steep price for it. So tying Hillary to Obama and encouraging people of all persuasions to vote for Bernie in the primaries is essential.
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